Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Anyone who’s anyone knows how I feel about winter. I make no apologies for the hate/hate relationship this season and I share….for I suspect that winter feels exactly the same way about me.

It began innocently enough.

Last night, it began to snow. They were those big, fat, wet snowflakes

…the kind that make everything look clean and fresh without causing mayhem on the roads.

This is the only kind of snow that I like.

It falls…I say “Oooh, pretty”, and then it promptly melts.

Good job. Now, let’s move on to spring, please.

Only. Not so fast.

The meek, silent snowflakes waited till we’d all gone to bed to transform themselves into deadly, sharp, slippery ice pellets. Had we still been awake, we would have undoubtedly heard the hisssssss-ing sound those nasty pellets make when they hit the lawn…

and the driveway…and those two patio recliners I keep forgetting to put away that are out by our fire pit.

My bad.

We’d been warned that this untactful, unwelcome (at least, by me) display of Mother Nature’s entrance into menopause would unfold overnight, so the boys were prepared for at minimum a delay and kept their fingers crossed for an announcement that school was cancelled.

I awoke the first time at 4:02am and sleep-walked my way into the office to check for an announcement online. There was nothing. I tripped over the dog on my way back to bed and attempted to resume my dream about tropical beaches,

margaritasand cabana boys with eyes of blue. Wait. Make those cabana men.

(Margarete knows what I’m talkin’ about.)

By 5, they’d posted a two-hour delay…not surprising…now the question was whether they’d reassess and switch to a cancel, or leave it as is. In the end, the two-hour delay seemed to be enough to get the busses rolling, so that was that.

Taylor (16) bolts out the front door and skids his way down the ice-encrusted front lawn and then delicately steps onto the ice-skating rink that had formed at the end of the drive. He looks up and sees me watching him out the front window, so he does a little jig…breaks into an exaggerated-ballerina-style-twirl, then placing his hands behind his back, he strikes the old-fashioned skater pose (not this one...but I just couldn't resist)

and glides over the ice. He almost stumbles on a frozen twig embedded in his path and he’s reminded that he’s got twenty pounds of book bag on his shoulder, so he’s a little off-kilter. At that moment his bus arrives, so the show’s over.

We’ve got Connor’s bus appearance down to the millisecond, as we’ve discovered the bus’s prior 2 stops are up on streets visible from my bedroom window…now that all those green, fluffy, happy leaves are no longer blocking our view. So, I stand guard at the window…staring intently at the street on the mountain…(lest I miss it)…till I see the bus begin its descent down the steep hill. Then I yell “BUS!!!” and out the door he goes. (Yes, I know…another genius plan on my part…I will do just about anything to cut the time he must wait in the cold down to the shortest possible duration. And how cool is this bus?!)

I then spend the next twenty minutes slipping and teetering my way down the drive with my coffee can filled with rock salt …not to be confused with sea salt, which is divine and actually comes from the deep, blue sea…which reminds me of my dream about cabanas and beaches and places where you don’t see your breath when you sigh. I think I might be needing one of these.

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welcome!

I'm glad you stopped by. Now that you're here, I hope you'll breathe and reboot. Cocktails are optional, but highly recommended. Not that you need one to find me utterly charming...but it couldn't hurt.So pour yourself a glass of Cloudy, raise it high and send a toast to all of us. I'll try my best to make you smile. But if I fail, just pour yourself another...it's a win/win.